I have a unique situation here - my wife is a doctor and I think what she really wants is a stay at home mother and wife.
I was raised by a single mother who definitely expected us to pull our weight around the house, and through years of being nagged and bothered I now have a real difficulty just sitting down if any kind of household work needs to be done. Dishes in the sink, mess on the floor, laundry not put away, kids need a bath, lunches need to be made- I feel like I need to do any and all of this before I can finally sit down.
My wife is happy to watch me do all of this stuff. She'll walk past a basket of laundry for four days. She'll come home after work and cook while I watch the kids before and after dinner. Finally at bathtime I will start to round the kids up while she sits on the couch looking at her phone. Most of the time she's happy to let me walk them upstairs myself. If I ask for help she'll say "ok, yeah, I'll take them." And then either a) leave them in the bath, alone, while she looks at her phone some more, and then scream at them for making a mess on the floor, or b) after 5 minutes say to me "they want you to sit with them" and walk away.
When it's bedtime her plan is to lie in bed watching TV yelling at a 2 year old to stay still. Every third night she does get up and try to put him in his bed, only to come back after 30 seconds and say "he wants you to put him to sleep." No kidding, because I do it 80% of the time.
If we're both home on a weekend, and we're both sitting with the kids, she's going to find something else to do. Run out to the store, weed the garden, look at magazines of home furnishings, whatever. If I say "look, I'm doing XYZ today" she'll say "sure, no problem." And then I come back to a house in disarray and her screaming at the kids and telling me "you have to handle them because they're out of control."
This is a long way of saying: I think my wife wants me to serve the role of a traditional "wife" to a successful man. She is happy to have me take care of all of all the stuff that needs to be taken care of with the kids and house, and is happy to pay lip service to how much she loves spending time with her family, so long as she can do it on her schedule and can have someone available to relieve her whenever she's done with them.
Clearly this isn't what I signed up for, and now I'm in this position. Is there a way to fix this short of just doing my own thing and leaving my kids to essentially fend for themselves with babysitters?
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